


Cocoons and Crow's Nests

by 0GVButterworth0



Category: Bandom, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Young Love, larry stylinson - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 13:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9074413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0GVButterworth0/pseuds/0GVButterworth0
Summary: Harry is happy to live his life in the confines of his Cocoon. Louis specializes in breaking down barriers.
It's a young love, coming of age Larry Stylinson one shot.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to see if I could write something short and I wanted to write some Larry. 
> 
> Yes, everything takes me forever, but you see, there's this tv show Skam I got hooked on and...
> 
> I hope you like it. I wanted to give it to my lovely readers as a Christmas gift. I hope your holidays were merry and bright.

Coming out wasn’t a rite of passage Harry ever anticipated he would undergo. Not that Harry was straight – he was perfectly gay, to be certain. Perfectly Gay Harry, however, had everything figured out. He was an introverted, retiring type who had cultivated such a lifestyle of self-sustainability that others accepted him as a one-man social eco-system whose private affairs were his own.

He referred to this transparent, energetic envelope of self-containment as ‘the Cocoon’.

His mother knew. He lived alone with her in a two bedroom flat two blocks east of Harry’s school and two blocks west of her work. One evening, as they sat enjoying the frozen pizza they had baked together, the newscaster happened onto the headline,  ‘More High Schoolers Than Ever Are Self Identifying as Homosexual’. His mother turned to look at him directly. He looked back at her and gave a little shrug. She returned it with a nod and went back to picking what little pizza flesh was left on her crust.

Harry had friends. Harry had school friends. Harry defined school friends as people he ate lunch with or sat next to in class. Once the school counselor had asked to speak with him on the topic of his friendlessness, but upon becoming acquainted with the Cocoon and the quiet contentment contained therein, chose to rely on the old adage of not fixing what wasn’t broken.

Harry’s other set of friends were people whose faces he’d  never seen. He was active on Tumbler and Twitter and, his secret delight, World of Warcraft. His most revealing of interpersonal discourse was conducted over DMs, Reddit threads, and Google Chat to people with names like SylvanElf3011 or keja455.

This was how Harry conducted his life and he felt safe and comfortable in his hermetically sealed bubble. Which was why he was completely disoriented and adrift the day in study hall when class clown Louis Tomlinson, in a fit of capricious pranksterdom snatched his open laptop from his desktop and hallooed, “Let’s see what you got here, slim!”

What Harry had there was an open Tumblr webpage that had been recommended to him as a magnificent repository of boyxboy drawings and photography. It was this very homoerotic material that made Louis Tomlinson’s eyes go wide and his mouth fall open as he clutched Harry’s most personal property in his hands.

“Give that back!” Harry yelped, louder than he’d ever said anything in his life. He yanked the machine back into his control, but he couldn’t undo the violation or exposure. Nor had he any power to prevent further humiliation when one of his classmates cawed, “What did you see, Louis?”

Harry desperately sought the edges of the Cocoon to pull it tight around him, but the it could only anesthetize him from so much embarrassment.

Harry had been in school with Louis since the sixth grade and the boy had only penetrated his awareness insomuch as Harry knew him to be obnoxious, attention seeking, and wisecracking. His entire system primed itself for the ground-splitting revelation that would shatter his carefully curated world irrevocably.

Then Louis said, for all to hear, “Nothing. He’s boring.”

Attention to the incident died immediately and Harry was forgotten, left to shake like a rabbit that barely escaped wolf jaws. So, Harry’s Cocoon of solitude fortified itself, and Harry had every allowance to carry on exactly as he had done, though he never again perused porn in study hall again.

Except, he couldn’t carry on as before. His secret had been discovered and now that secret was a shared one.

Louis Tomlinson was constantly surrounded by people. He was the king of a gaggle of goofballs and they were just as effective in defending Louis against an uncertain world as was Harry’s Cocoon. Harry’s Cocoon could go where Louis’ gaggle couldn’t however, and he cornered the joker in the bathroom between periods.

“Why did you do that?” Harry’s was the voice of a faker. He was clearly nowhere as self-possessed and scary as he was pretending to be.

“What?” Louis asked, blindsided by the mute finding his tongue.

“My laptop!  Why did you steal my laptop? What was that about?”

Louis finished washing his hands and was hastily rubbing them under the hand dryer with a pointed intention of being rid of both the bathroom and the conversation as soon as possible. “I don’t know. It was just a joke.”

“It wasn’t funny! I don’t even know you!”

“Fine! Whatever! Just chill out, man! Jesus!”

And Louis Tomlinson made his escape, leaving Harry with a quivering, disappointed, and even lonelier Cocoon.

~*~

It remained that way for many weeks – a vague sense that he had been disrupted and interfered with, despite all his attempts to correct the blind spot in his daily routine. Then the weird day came that Louis noticeably detached himself from his gaggle and sprung himself on Harry in the hall.

“What are you doing tonight?” he asked, and Harry thought it was a trick question.

“Nothing.”

“Cool. We’ll go to the park by the lake.”

The surreality of it almost made Harry fall over; the curiosity of it made him go. He thought he had beaten Louis to the designated place until one of the toddlers on the monkey bars started yelling at him. “Hey! Hey! Harry! Over here!”

Louis was hanging by his knees, waving his arms frantically and making quite a fuss. “Ok, watch this!” he said once he had Harry’s full attention. He began swinging himself around, catching rungs with his knees, then with his hands, then his knees again in a clumsy but enthusiastic feat of gymnastics. Harry wasn’t particularly certain which part of this was supposed to be the part worthy of spectating; he suspected Louis just lived for attention. He wasn’t terribly displeased, however, since Louis’ constant inversions made his shirt ride up and expose the taut, bronze flesh of his tummy. When his shirt flew up high enough to expose a dusky nipple, Harry blushed and looked away.

“Your turn!” the other boy chirped, dismounting and stumbling haphazardly in the soft sand. Harry shook his head and Louis made the kind of outrageous snuff that was usually reserved for indignant water buffalo. “Man, you are no fun,” he accused, and Harry felt the stab of pain in knowing it was true.

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

“What?”

Even as Louis neared, the wind had picked up, tossing Harry’s unruly curls into his eyes and sweeping his soft, low voice away from Louis’ ears.

“I said,” he tried again, “What did you want to talk to me about?” He was leaning into Louis’ ear just when the wind kicked hard, flipping Louis’ hoodie directly into Harry’s face. He flailed, swatting at the soft cotton, unsurprised at the sound of Louis’ reckless laughter.  The wind blasted them again and Harry immediately agreed to Louis’ offer of finding shelter in the plastic crow’s nest that sat one story above the playground structure.

Harry scrambled up the rope ladder, swung himself across the monkey bars, and crawled through the tunnel, his heart beating a happy rhythm he hadn’t felt in years. When they landed in the crow’s nest, smiling and laughing, Harry felt strange for how giddy he was.

Louis started speaking abruptly. “So, you know Zayn? He’s the half-Pakistani kid in our year.”

Harry knew him as well as he knew anyone on the outside of the Cocoon: as a barely distinguishable independent force that Harry only bothered to mind under direct circumstances. He didn’t say this, but Louis kept talking anyway. “Yeah, well, we’ve sort of been making out for a while, now. Like, nothing official or anything, just like after drama, we ditch and go make out. And, I mean, we do more than make-out sometimes, too. Just – y’know. I mean, _you know_.”

Harry did not know and he was blushing so badly, he crossed his arms on the railing of the crow’s nest and hid his face in his sweater. Louis didn’t seem to notice Harry’s discomfort as he kept prattling on. “So, anyway, I say to him maybe we should do a scene from Bent in drama, you know, ‘cause we’re both so into drama; and he gets all weird and angry and says he was thinking about dropping drama anyway, which he _isn’t_ – he loves drama—“

“Louis.”

“What?”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Well,” Louis sniffed and rubbed his nose, “you’re gay, right?”

Being two fully (or near-fully) grown men as they were, they couldn’t fit in a child’s playground crow’s nest unless they stuck their legs over the side and let them dangle. It was on their feet, his own hanging low and still, while Louis’ kicked and swung compulsively, that Harry concentrated, instead of answering Louis’ question.

But Louis pressed it. “I mean, you are, aren’t you? You were looking at pictures of naked dudes kissing.”

Harry neared cardiac arrest.

“But dude, let me tell you, gaygifs is the good stuff. I mean, it’s a little hardcore sometimes, but that’s where you get your dick, Harold.”

There was something in his voice, so impish and tricksy, that made Harry feel that maybe nothing was as serious as it seemed. An unexpected burble of laughter burst from Harry’s lips like the pop of a champagne cork. Louis laughed with him, surprised and delighted by the anomaly of Harry Styles laughing.

“So what do I do?” Louis asked through his snickers.

“About what?”

“About Zayn! I mean, I don’t have anyone to talk to about this, Harold. And, I mean, c’mon, you’re smart. You’re, like, insightful and stuff.”

The adjectives carried the clear implication that these were rare and refined qualities exhibited only in the elite, of which Louis Tomlinson did not consider himself. It made Harry blush again and he didn’t want to die anymore. In fact, it rather made him want to talk, and that in a voice above a whisper.

After all, the problem was an easy one. So simple in fact that he summed it up with the concise thesis of, “He thinks you want to go public and because that’s threatening to him, he’s having an aggressive- defensive reaction.”

Louis looked at him as though he was a performer of miracles.

“You – How did you do that? You made that look easy!”

Harry shrugged. It was.

The thing was, Louis explained, he did want to go public. “I really like him,” he explained, his hands expressively flickering between them like fire. “I want to hold his hand and stuff.”

Zayn’s reaction, Harry explained, was beyond his control. Louis’ actions, however, were entirely dictated by his own agency and it was there Louis should focus. By the time he finished speaking, Louis’ feet had gone as still as Harry’s.

“That’s weird how you do that. You’re like a robot. But, like a philosophical, emotion-y robot.”

Harry tried to choke down his laughter because he was already outside his comfort zone, but it came out anyway, as an eruptive spray of spittle and snickers. “What?”

“Are you one of those Buddhists that come back and, like, sneak around doing Buddhist stuff and being all wise and shit?”

Harry was openly cackling, unable to contain himself. “ _What_?”

“My mom listens to weird audiobooks while she cooks; doesn’t matter. Anyway!”

They spent three hours in that crow’s nest, Louis in cartoonish awe and Harry experimenting with uncontrollable laughter and good feeling; both states equally unnatural to them.

Furthermore, combining their intelligence, they solved the problem: Louis would tell Zayn the truth and allow Zayn’s reaction to be what it was, come what may.

When the night got too dark and the air got too cold, Louis suggested they race to the bottom of the jungle gym and Harry didn’t hesitate.

~*~

Harry now had one whole, real life, actual human friend. Louis didn’t abandon his gaggle and Harry’s Cocoon was securely in place, but they had now formed a bridge between them that both Cocoon and gaggle had adjusted to accommodate.

Harry was learning to text. Louis really liked texting; so much so that sometimes, Harry would receive texts that said things like: “I just want to see how much I can text you before you go bonkers.” Followed by, “Annoyed yet?” “Annoyed yet?” “Annoyed yet?”

Sometimes, Harry would receive an unsolicited flurry of texts containing emojis, dirty gifs, and jokes told punch-line first. This was almost inevitably followed by a solid hour of silence in which Louis’ phone was no doubt sleeping it off in a teacher’s desk.

Of course, most of the texts were about Zayn; a lot about how he was ignoring Louis now, how much that sucked, how Zayn would unexpectedly throw out a flirty compliment that was confusing. Eventually, the text came that said, “Crow’s nest. Shit went down.”

Harry was in the crow’s nest before Louis. He sat on the autumn-cold plastic of the structure and stared at his Converse as he swung them back and forth. His heart was beating with the rhythmic enthusiasm of girls playing jump rope and Harry soothed himself with the idea that it was only because he had sprinted up the jungle gym.  He wanted Louis to appear quickly, so this strange phenomenon wouldn’t have the time to dislodge truths and bring them undeniably into his awareness.

Wearing emerald, moving like there was someone nearby judging him with a timer, Louis Tomlinson finally appeared. He scrambled up the jungle gym with the agility of a squirrel and immediately began to play.

“Get down, private! They’ll be shelling us in no time!”

As Harry blinked in confusion, Louis clambered around him to take cover behind the pole that rose from the middle of the crow’s nest and ascended a good seven feet into the air.

“Who will be what, now--?”

“We have to defend the post til dawn!” Louis replied, checking the magazine of his invisible rifle. “If Jerry get their hands on our ammunition, it’ll all be for nothing!”

Harry just stared at him. Louis looked up, flood-light eyes blasting Harry with all the vigor, excitement, and earnestness that was Louis Tomlinson. When he got over the initial bombardment of all that blue, Harry also saw something else there: the yearning for Harry to follow him into this childlike madness and the eagerness that he should enjoy it.

Harry cleared his throat a little bit and slowly tucked his legs back from between the crow’s nest’s plastic guardrail. Then he took hold of his invisible field radio, cranked the battery a few times, and yelled over the inaudible, incoming rifle-fire, “We need back up! Send in an airstrike, now!”

~*~

Their fort had been overrun and had cost Corporal Louis Tomlinson both of his legs.  Ground-pounder Styles had to drag him to the cover of the lower platform in the sand, and now poor Tommo was gasping his last, kicking his previously-blown-off legs in his death throes.

“The 501st will be here any minute,” Louis wheezed.

“There was a 501st?”

“Yes! I’m dying, Styles, concentrate!”

“Sorry.”

“Uh… Where was I? Oh, yeah! The 501st will be here any minute! And when they come, they goin’ blow us all sky high!”

Apparently, in his final moments, Corporal Tomlinson had become Texan.

“They shore will,” Harry replied, catching the accent like a yawn, “and then they goin’ reward us the purple heart and make our mammas proud!”

“Will they, Staaahls?”

“You bet, Tommo.”

“You could still run. Save yoreself!”

“And leave you alone in the cold t’ dah? You been my best friend awl these years!”

Louis broke character for a moment and took over as a fully able-bodied narrator, “And then then jets come in and they drop the bombs on the bunkers and it’s all,” he started whistling, starting at a high pitch and slowly dropping down the scale, until, “KCCCHHHH-PPUUOORRRRRGGHHH!”

“Are we dead?” Harry asked the man, who was performing a sort of interpretive dance of what an exploding bomb might look like if personified, kicking and throwing sand everywhere.

“No!” Louis said excitedly. “That one didn’t get through! We’re still alive!” Then Corporal Tommo was back, “Hold me, Stahls! Hold me close, like I’m yer darlin’ at the Sock Hop!”

Snickering madly, Harry synched him up tight in his arms, and Louis pawed at his curls with histrionic frenzy.

“Y’know, Stahls. There’s somethin’ I never told yew…”

“Yeah, Corp?”

“Ah—Ah—Ah’ve always loved yew!” This confessed, Corporal Tommo flung his only remaining limbs about his subordinate’s neck and mashed his lips into Harry’s beaming, unsuspecting mouth. As his smile faded, which was almost immediate, his lips melted against those against his, forming a perfect, natural lock. Harry became very aware of his Cocoon at that moment and was startled to realize that not only did it suffer no damage to its integrity, but it had actually expanded to encompass Louis as well. And within that Cocoon, in which a single kiss had rendered the world still and silent, Harry could only feel too well how vital, powerful, exciting Louis felt in his arms. He held him closer, kissed him harder, and just when he was officially chalking this up to the most alive he’d ever felt in his life, Corporal Tommo flung himself back in Harry’s lap and, with a belly-deep, blood-gurgling groan, died.

Harry took several moments just staring at the boy – corpse – in his lap. His eyes were wide and staring into nothing, with the exception of the infrequent and valiantly-fought-against blinking, and his tongue dangled out of his mouth in a clownishly unlikely death mask. Harry didn’t know what to do.

“So you stay?” Louis asked abruptly, looking at him.

“What?”

“Instead of running from the air strike? You’re gonna stay and cry on my corpse and die with me?”

“Oh, uhhh… Yeah. I guess so.”

“That’s so romantic.”

Harry blushed hard and dropped his head to hide his smile. “Yeah. So, are we done?”

“Done?”

“Yeah.”

“No! I don’t see any crying.”

“What? You actually want me to cry?”

“I just died, Styles! Yes, I want you to cry!”

“You’re really bad at dying.”

“And you’re even worse at crying! But we gotta do it so the second pass of the air strike can come! They’ll use the bunker busters this time! C’mon, it’ll be really dramatic!”

Harry couldn’t deny that the whole thing was going to be terribly, terribly dramatic. That is, if they could only stop laughing. “Ok, ok, but you have to actually be dead so I can cry.”

“Ok, I’m officially dead again.” Louis threw himself askew again and the tongue lolled out. For the life of him, Harry couldn’t stifle his snickers, but through the artfully applied use of sniffles and ‘boo-hoos’, he did manage to make the laughter sound a bit like sobs. Maintaining his carefully composed sprawl, Louis gave the high-to-low whistle again that indicated another bomb was being dropped. Harry dutifully sobbed harder and harder until the bomb hit.

Both of them, completely antithetical to the world they pantomimed, leapt up with joy and vigorously kicked up bucketfulls of sand as the outpost of La Rochelle met its calamitous, anachronistic end.

~*~

Louis had nearly forgotten that he had asked Harry to meet him at the crow’s nest for a purpose other than role-playing historical fiction. Harry had to remind him. The gears shifted in Louis seamlessly and if it weren’t for the sand that had gotten into their shoes and their hair, there would be no proof whatsoever that they had just been romping carelessly in the sand, so solemn was Louis in the recounting of past week of interaction with Zayn.

He had told Zayn everything. He had told him that he wanted more, but he understood if their peers knowing the true nature of their relationship made him uncomfortable. He was willing to experiment if that was what Zayn needed. But most of all, Louis had said to Zayn he was falling in love with him and Zayn needed to know that.

Apparently, Zayn took it well. No, he wasn’t comfortable with people knowing about them; yes, he had feelings for Louis, too, but he didn’t know how far he could go.

Okay?

Okay.

“So,” Harry asked, “what’s wrong?”

What was wrong, Louis explained, was that in the subsequent days, Zayn had dropped out of drama, had stopped returning his texts and, potentially, though it was unconfirmed and untraceable, started a rumor that Louis was a terrible kisser.

This was all very transparent to Harry, but a glance at Louis’ pouting, crestfallen face told him a dissection of the events was not what was needed here. However, Harry had no practice in comforting. The decision to comfort or not to comfort was taken out of his hands when Louis tipped sideways, burrowing his head into Harry’s shoulder.

Harry held very still.

Louis pressed harder and out of a previously untapped compassion impulse, Harry took hold of his hand. Then, he draped his arm around the boy’s shoulders. When Louis tucked firmly against him and nuzzled into the wool of Harry’s sweater, Harry felt that he had certifiably Done the Right Thing.

For a quarter of an hour, they were two boys holding hands and cuddling two stories above the world in a jungle gym crow’s nest.

“Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“You ever think about coming out? How you wanna do it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Cause I don’t want to.”

“Well, I mean, no one wants to. It’s just something you gotta do. Like dropping your balls out of the comfy warmth of your body, you just gotta do it, man.”

Harry had gotten used to laughing with Louis, just as he was getting used to holding his hand.

“So,” Louis pressed again, “how you gonna do it?”

The sun was setting and the air was turning stiff, freezing the very snot in their nostrils.

“I’m not. It isn’t anybody’s business.”

“Well, no, but it’s who you are; you gotta let people see that.”

“I don’t have to let anybody see anything.” Harry regretted the cruelty and defensiveness he heard in his own voice. He was embarrassed and wanted to undo or mitigate it, but he was too socially unversed and awkward to know how to do it. He was contracting in on himself, much like the bitter cool they were sitting in.

“Whoa, Harry,” Louis said, impressed in a way that didn’t make Harry feel very good about himself.

“Well,” Harry said, trying to make his voice soft and friendly again, “what do you want to do? How do you want to come out?”

“I don’t know,” Louis said, “but I want to. I want to more now than ever. Zayn can be an immature little bitch, but I don’t want to be. I mean, you were right. My actions are all I have control of and I wanna come out on my own terms.”

Against his wishes, Harry began fantasizing about what his own terms might be. He hadn’t touched any anything truly satisfactory when Louis lifted his head from his shoulder and said, all exuberance, “We should come out together!”

Louis’ deep sea-green eyes were right there, sparkling with the lure of sunken treasure and unexplored shipwrecks and Harry got momentarily lost in them. “What?”

“We should come out together! I mean, we don’t have to do it alone! It won’t be as scary! We have each other!”

There was an engine of fire behind Louis’ request and Harry felt himself reaching for the security of his Cocoon, bringing it back in close around him. “No,” he said, feeling trembling deep in his belly. “No.”

“Oh, come on!” Louis pushed. “It would be so easy! We could find some—some—“ He bit down on the dusky rose of his lower lip and his brow rumpled in concentration. Then his expression exploded open again as he found his solution, “We could do it for the Shakespeare presentation in English! We have to do it with a partner! It would be amazing! Hell yeah!”

Louis got to his feet and gave a few jumps in the limited space of the crow’s nest, making the entire jungle gym shake and groan. “It would be amazing, Harry! Let’s do it! And we’d get a fucking passing grade, guaranteed! Teachers love coming out and shit!”

“No.” Harry was gripping the bars of the crow’s nest, anticipating an entire structural collapse. “I can’t do that.”

“You can do anything you want to, Harry! I mean, you may be the insightful one and all, but you’ve gotta stop hiding. I know that much.”

Louis had stopped the jumping, but Harry was still shaking as he got to his feet. The other boy was so very close to him, and was simultaneously blocking the exit passage to the nest. “I have to go,” he said, pushing forward to eke past Louis to the metal ladder.

“Harry, no,” Louis said, stepping in front of him. “C’mon, can we just talk about it at least?”

“No. I have to go now.”

Harry’s second attempt was successful and as he scrambled to find successive rungs of the ladder, he heard Louis’ heavy sigh before he muttered, “You know I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, Harry…”

~*~

Harry’s Cocoon got thicker. He needed it to, because things were getting very scary. Despite how good it had felt, the expansion of his Cocoon to include Louis was terribly threatening in afterthought, and resulted in an equal and opposite contraction. Talk of a joint coming out presentation had likewise given him a fright and he did his best to put both Louis and Shakespeare presentations out of his mind. He might have achieved this with hard-won success if it weren’t for that he saw everything through a filter of deep sea blue that made everything almost unbearably beautiful, and by Wednesday he had already written half of the presentation essay in his head.

“So, you’re second boy to run away from me in less than a week,” Louis said in one text. In the next, “What did I do wrong?”

Both texts went unanswered for the better part of three hours before Harry texted back, “If we do that, people will think we’re together.”

Louis apparently didn’t need further context to understand the subject Harry was referring to. He wrote back, “So? You think you’re too good for the likes of me? ;p”

Harry wasn’t certain how to take that, but knowing Louis, it was probably more of a joke than a proposal. He texted back, “Are you still in love with Zayn?”

“I think so,” said the first message. “But I want to do this for me, not for him,” said the second. “For us,” corrected the third. Perhaps sensing a weakening of resolve, a conciliatory fourth text came in, “It wouldn’t have to be the presentation. It could be anything. Anything you want.”

Harry stared at his phone from the safety of his Cocoon, his knuckles mashed into his lips. One last text from Louis shook him loose and it read, “The presentation was a stupid idea, anyway.”

“No, it wasn’t,” tap tap tap, “I’ve already written it.”

~*~

The day of the Junior year English Shakespeare presentations was a day Harry Styles almost called in sick. He very well may have done if it weren’t for that it seemed like his mother was going to spend the day at home as well, taking telephone conferences. At least, that was a handy excuse. The truth that Harry was more frightened to face was that he had written a truly fine presentation essay for which he knew he had gone above and beyond set expectations and that had come from the wisest, happiest, most integrated part of himself and, scared as he was, he wanted to share it.

As he stood next to his locker, report in hand, student populace tumbling about before him, all of that wise, happy integration didn’t seem as robust as it needed to be to endure a potential backlash. It was while he was considering this that bright-eyed, fleet-footed, uncomplicated Louis Tomlinson appeared before him.

“C’mon, what are you waiting for?” he chirped, shocking Harry with his zeal. Self-doubt and second thoughts were not part of Tomlinson genetics. He took a hold of the fleece of Harry’s over-worn English trolley sweatshirt  and, like the figurehead of a galleon, cut through the cresting waves of students to their English class.

Mr. Travers, a man with an expression of permanent incredulity, had arranged the presentations with no arrangement at all: The students were invited to take the stage in whatever order suited them and this made Harry very anxious. After every pair finished their presentation, Louis would turn to him with bushy-tailed enthusiasm that always crumpled when Harry refused to even look at him.

When it became apparent that Harry was going to turtle in hopes of Mr. Travers forgetting of his existence entirely, Louis took hold of Harry’s sleeve as he’d done in the halls and hauled him to the front of the room, cawing, “Our turn now!”

As he turned to face the room, Harry felt he couldn’t be any more exposed or vulnerable than if he were standing on the edge of the top of the Empire State Building. From this vantage, he could see his peers and he found great comfort in the bored indifference he saw in their faces.

Then, Louis’ voice rang out, clarion and uncompromising, and that bored indifference gave way to alert attention. “Okay, everyone,” Louis cried like the warning cry of a hawk, “we did _Romeo and Juliet_ and we wrote a report about how societal pressures interfere with who you love and even who you are. So, is everyone ready for this? Because this is blazing hot and it’s gonna leave scorch marks if you bitches ain’t paying attention!”

After a brief remonstrance from Mr. Travers for the use of profanity, Harry’s words came tumbling out of Louis Tomlinson’s mouth. Harry was proud of them written on paper, but there was no doubt in his mind that Louis’ voice was the finer format. Louis was pure vim, clever and bright as Mercury himself. He spoke of how the Montagues and Capulets had created a society where the hatred of a grudge suppressed genuine love between two people; how Juliet’s cleverness was ignored in favor of her child-bearing capabilities by her parents; and even Mercutio’s death cries weren’t taken seriously. These were examples, Louis clarified, of the objectification and devaluation of individuals. He talked about how Shakespeare made very clear that the marginalization of people’s humanity led to societal decay and, what’s more, Louis expressed all of this as someone who truly believed and understood it.

Harry couldn’t look away. He was lost in the dawning attractiveness of Louis’ features. Harry had always known Louis had an aesthetically pleasing, symmetrical face, but as he watched him speak his words with such affinity and animation, the fine cut of his cheekbone, the graceful slope of his nose, his oceanic eyes and agile lips suddenly seemed to illuminate from within.

If he was staring, it only came to his attention when Louis stopped talking and those oceanic, lighthouse eyes turned on him with an expression of anticipation. Harry was momentarily confused. Then, the small fragment of his reptile brain that was not enchanted by boyish wiles sprang forth to remind him that it was his turn to present the next part of their dissertation.

Terror struck. A panic of pure, prolonged lightning crackled through him and he felt as if his very soul was trying to escape out of the top of his head. He began to sweat and blush like he did when eating Pho, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. His will to speak manifested in little more than gulps. Somewhere in the distance he could hear the tearing open of the seventh seal.

Before the full force of the Apocalypse was on him, a firm hand fell on his shoulder blade and that soothing, birdsong voice was back. “Uh,” Louis addressed the class. “Think Harry’s got a bit of stage fright. Just move your mouth, Harry, we’ll show them our ventriloquist act!” Harry was too far gone to get the joke, but the class laughed and Mr. Travers didn’t object when Louis picked up the second half.

It was the part Harry was the most proud of, which was why he thought he could bear to read it; a subtle transition into Shakespeare’s championing of star-crossed, or race-crossed, class-crossed, and, of course, gender-crossed lovers across the canon: The strong love language of Antonio to Sebastian, and the unconditional love of the two male leads in Merchant of Venice surely proved the Bard had not only sympathy for homosexuals, but understanding in the pain of its oppression and unrequital, perhaps best expressed in Sonnet 20.

“And that’s important to Harry and I,” Louis said with as much gaiety as a summer vacation story would warrant, “because we’re queer. And we got sick of hiding it. And it’s been five hundred years since Shakespeare wrote _Romeo and Juliet_ and we think it’s about damned time that people stopped putting parameters on love. So, we’re coming out. In this book report. This is it. Right here, people. You’re looking at it. Care to comment, Harry? No? Alright, then. On to the closing paragraph, I guess. Starts with restating the thesis, I’m spoiling that right now. Here it comes.”

All Harry really remembered from the moment of his coming out was the small spot of linoleum from which he could not lift his eyes. So, as far as his peers’ reactions went, he truly had no idea. There were a few noises that could have been interpreted in myriad ways and the murmur that kicked up was indistinguishable. However, when Louis stopped talking, he heard clapping. There was an arm around his neck and the t-shirt-that-had-been-crumpled-on-the-floor-for-two-days smell of Louis filled his nose.

Harry finally looked up. The girl in the front row was smiling. A few of the boys were laughing. Mr. Travers seemed pleased. No one was throwing anything. The strongest show of displeasure was that a few students refrained from applause.

Their coming out was a success. Louis was clutching him tightly and the butterflies in his stomach were not going away.

~*~

They got an “A”, of course. The first A of Louis’ life, if he was to be believed. Travers even wrote a note in the margin, commending them with strong words of praise: “Shakespeare would be proud of your courage.” It made Harry tear up. Travers didn’t even dock a point for Harry’s stage fright.

While all of this was quite pleasant, it was none of it terribly unexpected. What was unexpected was the distinct social shift that his Cocoon wasn’t entirely equipped to handle. Like a rabbit long-palmed and only now produced from the hat, Harry was no longer invisible. Kids said hi to him in the hall, and if not that, he was well-eyed. Teachers called on him more in class and some kids even engaged him in small talk, which was a truly agonizing circumstance for one with such cultivated introversion as Harry. But now, he had the distinction of being one of the two uncloseted gay boys in the school.

He was grateful that the general response was predominantly interest and curiosity, but he heard every whispered slur and it only made him reinforce the walls of his solitude to war-like defensiveness. In fact, the only times they dissolved, relaxed, or expanded was in the presence of the boy the whole school presumed to be his boyfriend.

“Maybe you shouldn’t sit with me,” Harry said, as Louis threw his plastic lunch tray next to him in the cafeteria.

“Why not?” Louis asked, his butt’s descent into the seat undeterred.

“Angela Hokomo told me she thought we were the cutest couple in school. People have the wrong idea.”

Louis took a cracking bite from his apple and before he’d even chomped it into something manageable, he garbled out, “What, you embarrassed? Think you could do better than me?”

Harry ducked his head and blushed. His Cocoon was simply malfunctioning around this boy. He couldn’t hide from him or block him out or find any way to be unaffected by him. Subsequently, all of his nervous ticks and insecurities were openly on display for the boy he most wished to impress.

“No, I mean, that’s not what I—“ he stammered. “It’s not that, you know, I mean, they just have the wrong impression and I mean, I know how you feel – Zayn and all.”

Zayn: the boy Harry had never met, but who Harry was beginning to hate more than people who had actually wronged him. Because his damn Cocoon wasn’t working, all of this may have been communicated in his voice. He risked a glance at Louis to see if it had and Louis was just smiling benignly as he swallowed down his apple. “Good,” he said with a wrinkle of his nose. “Let’s make him jealous.”

The pain of his unrequited affection would have been too intense to ignore even had his Cocoon been as resistant to Louis as it was to the rest of the world. His only hope for safety was to gather up his belongings and seek refuge in the bathroom, where he could let his tears flow freely. The look of confusion on Louis’ face as he left was mingled with regret, but Harry trusted that Louis’ resilience would have him righted and merry again in a matter of moments. It was part of what made him so effortlessly loveable.

This was the sort of thing, after all, that his psyche had built a Cocoon to defend against, anyway. He had resolved to himself that if his Cocoon was vulnerable to Louis’ charisma, then his only recourse was to avoid Louis altogether. This discipline lasted all of three weeks, until Harry was walking through the drama wing and was accosted by the sound of yelling. It sounded like it was coming from the theater, so Harry hoped it amounted to nothing more than good acting. But as he neared the stage door, he recognized Louis voice and, as much as he adored the boy, Harry knew he simply wasn’t that good an actor.

“You’re just selfish! You’ve been stringing me along and you’re never gonna give me anything back! You’re an attention-vampire, Zayn! A sucky, sucking, sucker vampire and I’m over it!”

There was a rebuttal, but it was too low and muffled to make its way through the thick wooden doors – not that he was eavesdropping. Except he was. In fact, he had come to a dead stop in the hall just to listen.

“No, no,” Louis’ eagle-cry pierced the air again. “It’s like the veil’s lifted! I’m over it! In fact,” Louis laughed and his voice became even lighter, “I feel great! Like the genie at the end of Aladdin! I’m free!” Zayn’s voice could finally be discerned as it lifted to top what was no doubt Louis dancing around the room, “Oh for fuck’s sake, Lou—“

“Wish for the Nile – NO WAY! Oh, does that feel _good_!” and precisely on cue, the boy himself burst into the hall, every bit an over-animated Disney cartoon. He was about to blast off in true Disney fashion when he caught sight of awkward, gangly, lonely, self-conscious Harry standing guiltily in the hall. That stopped Louis dead in his tracks and his breath hitched strangely. Just when Harry felt he may have to launch into a self-justifying stammer, Louis picked up whatever momentum he’d dropped and strut over to Harry where he stood, his hands lodged firmly into his red-braced jeans.

“And as for you, Harry Styles,” he said, chin tilted up to face the taller boy, “where the hell have _you_ been?”

Harry swallowed, justly accused, and felt the babbling start to rise in his throat again. But again, Louis spared him and, spritely and unpredictable as a zephyr, changed course again. “Nah, it’s cool. You don’t have to say anything, I get it. I can be clingy. Zayn just said so, anyway. Suppose it’s something I gotta work on.”

“No,” Harry blurted. “It’s not that,” was as eloquent as Harry could concoct.

Louis just shrugged. “You wanna go shoot some hoops in the gym? I only have study hall after this.”

“I have economics now,” Harry replied, a sentence constructed out of Cocoon training and one he would regret.

Louis nodded like he understood something Harry wasn’t trying to convey and said simply, “I gotcha. I’ll catch you around.”

Going against his own wishes, Harry actually went to economics. When the last bell of the day rang and he ran to the gym, he found it empty. When he went to the park and climbed to the crow’s nest, he found that empty, too. Still, he dangled his ever-lengthening legs over the side and leaned against the railing, watching his breath as he sighed it out in an endless stream. He remained here for several hours, pondering deeply of how he, a boy with a flawlessly constructed Cocoon, might find a way of dismantling and relinquishing said perfect construct, on the outside chance of offering love and being loved in turn.

~*~

The following morning, a miracle happened. It occurred in the two minutes between Harry putting down his spoon for his morning cereal and picking up his toothbrush. What happened was this: Between kitchen and bathroom, he stopped in his bedroom, unplugged his phone from its dock and typed the words, “Come over to my place after school?” in a text, which he then delivered to Louis Tomlinson. He didn’t even stop to contemplate it. He simply typed it and sent it. That is to say, some hidden, silent, unbefore-knownst part of Harry Styles typed and sent it. It was a part so infrequently accessed that, as he stared at his mouth, foaming from his over-application of toothpaste, he could convince himself that he hadn’t actually typed or sent it at all. Such behavior was not permissible by the Cocoon, after all. However, when a reply text from Louis sounded in with the single word, “Yeah,” Harry could no longer deny that something had, indeed, gotten through.

He used his lunch hour to run home and clean his room. He used cleaning his room to distract himself from the fact that he had no idea what he was going to say to the boy he felt so strongly for and had bungled things so badly with. The rest of the day offered no revelations in that department, either. In fact, he was so anxious, he considered calling his mom and asking her to come home early, just to make the situation less intimate. But he didn’t, no matter how badly his Cocoon trembled at the thought of Louis Tomlinson in his personal space, fully loaded with the potential to break him.

By the time Louis showed up at his door, he had nachos baking in the oven and a Quentin Tarantino Spotify station playing on his phone, because he desperately wanted to seem cool. Louis stood on his threshold, wearing the same red and blue stripped shirt he’d been sweating in all day at school. Harry felt stupid and obvious for having changed and showered.

“Hi,” Harry said. Louis gave him a funny little smile and hesitated a moment on the doorstep. “Wanna come in?” Harry tempted, his toes curling in his shoes. To his dismay, there was an instant in which Louis seemed genuinely undecided. But then the boy leaned in and said graciously, “Smells good.”

“I’m making nachos. Hungry?”

“Starving!”

Whatever resistance Louis had been experiencing evaporated and he hopped inside, immediately launching into a fully investigative mode that commenced with a test sit on the sofa (“pretty comfy”), a consideration of the television (“Fine for tv, but you’d have to sit closer for a movie”), and a perusal of the kitchen (“I make awesome chili! Do you have a big pot?”). Then Louis was banging open doors and cabinets, on the hunt.

Harry was about to direct him to the drawer under the oven, when suddenly Louis stopped and stood up, a grimace of dissatisfaction on his face. “Fuck,” he hissed through his teeth, “I’m doing it again, aren’t I? I’m sorry.”

He turned to Harry but couldn’t make eye contact. “I do that sometimes,” he said. “I get excited and I just kind of go nuts. I know you’re a super private person, I must—  I must be freaking you out.”

In truth, when Harry checked in with himself, he was unsurprised to find a low level of distinct panic. He felt his Cocoon trying to exert itself, but he ignored it.

“It’s ok,” he said, watching as his friend struggled with inner demons of his own. “Want to see my room?”

“Really?” Louis lit up in surprise.

“Yeah,” Harry said, laughing softly at the pure eagerness exuding from the other boy. Harry couldn’t help but be a little foolishly excited, himself. He had never had a friend in his room before. When he was younger, when his parents were still together and sharing an actual house in the suburbs, Harry had entertained playmates in his room, albeit infrequently. This room, however, had remained unintroduced to all creatures, excepting Harry, his mother, a few bedbugs, and the exterminator that had rid him of said bedbugs.

“Oh, wow,” Louis gawped as he entered the room, and although Harry found the awe unwarranted, it pleased him. “You really like London, huh?”

“Oh… Yeah,” Harry said quietly, perhaps sheepishly. “I have family from there. I want to do a year abroad.”

“That’s so cool,” Louis said, examining the huge Union Jack Harry had hung above his bed and the paneled posters with various “Keep Calm and Carry On” motifs.

“Think  my family is really British, too,” Louis said. “I always wanted to backpack across Europe, you know?” He dropped onto Harry’s bed and swept Harry’s red phone booth pillow into his lap. “My cousin did it and he said it was the best four months of his life. I asked him what he—“ But then it happened again: Louis stopped and seemed to become suddenly aware that he had welcomed himself onto Harry’s bed and to his things. He deflated before Harry’s eyes and carefully put Harry’s pillow back where he found it. “I’m sorry, man,” he said again, rising to his feet and brushing off the duvet where his shoes had been on it.

“It’s ok,” Harry said, adding a soft laugh to try to cut the tension. It didn’t work.

“No, it isn’t,” Louis replied, shoving his hands into his armpits as if to quash his impulsive grabbing of things. “I don’t want to scare you off again.” He gave a delicate huff from behind his nose and Harry felt that he’d suddenly fallen very far behind the conversation.

“I know, I’m—I’m a lot. I know that. And I know you like your space and your privacy and I really respect that. I mean, I want to respect that. I just, I mean you’re like my only real friend, you know? You helped me through all this Zayn shit and I mean, I can’t even talk to any of my other friends about – well. I mean, anything, really. I just…” He stared at the carpet, the weight of his burden apparent on his face. “I feel like shit. I thought you were done with me, too. I don’t want to screw this up. I don’t want to lose you, too.”

Harry had no idea what to say. That is, there was so much to say, but none of it was safe or easy. He gawped a moment, wanting so badly to comfort the deeply sad boy across from him, but feeling also too paralyzed with fear of exposure to do it.

“I don’t—You won’t scare me away,” he ventured. It failed to produce the desired effect.

“Yes, I will,” Louis said, dropping onto the floor as if he was unworthy of furniture. “I already did once already. I will again.”

“You didn’t scare me away,” Harry said, very timidly taking a seat next to his friend on the floor.

“You didn’t talk to me for weeks, Styles. Like, it’s been over a month,” Louis clarified bluntly, and Harry could see how deeply it had pained this otherwise carefree boy.

“You didn’t scare me off,” Harry repeated. “That wasn’t it.”

Louis snuck a peek at Harry’s eyes, but quickly looked away. “Then what was it?”

It was a fair question, one Harry had been expecting, but he shut down and fell completely silent all the same. Not even the lamest of excuses came to his mind, and inevitably, Louis came to his own conclusions. “Was it because – because people thought you were my boyfriend? I swear, I told everyone it wasn’t like that—“

“No,” Harry said, full of regret for putting himself in this situation, for not thinking up a useful, protective lie. “It wasn’t that, it was, I just—“

“You needed space.”

“I, yeah, I guess.”

“Because I was in your face all the time, like Zayn said—“

“No, it’s not—“

“Well, what, Harry? I needed – I missed you.”

The sorrow in Louis’ voice was making fast work of Harry’s defenses. He was saved by the timer going off in the kitchen and, like the coward he was, he ran for it with a curt, “Nachos will burn. I’ll be right back.”

The sanctuary of the kitchen allowed him to try to collect himself. He was panicking on two fronts: From the east, the fear of blurting out the truth of his feelings, and from the West, the fear of leaving his feelings unspoken.

On the positive side, the nachos were amazing. The chips were lightly toasted, the cheese evenly distributed and well melted, the ground beef brown and seasoned, and when Harry dropped a dollop of sour cream atop it, he felt himself calm and center slightly by witnessing its perfection.

The warm plate felt good in his hands and he used the sensation to ground himself when he returned to his room. Louis was where he left him, face drawn and eyes far away.

“Still hungry?” Harry asked gently, and Louis answered him with a smile. “A boy who cooks. Be still, my heart,” he quipped casually, but it still made Harry blush. He had hurt the boy sitting on the floor in his room, abandoned him when he needed him most, and he deserved an explanation. Harry could feel his Cocoon trying to strengthen around him. He paused and extended a finger, venturing to actually give a little poke to the imaginary shell. His mind’s eye saw it tremble, saw it grow weaker simply by Harry’s heightened awareness of it. He had a choice. Staring at the transparent blue gossamer hovering around him, Harry knew now that whether or not he stayed walled in his fortress was actually his choice.

He sat on the carpet next to Louis again and set the nachos where they could both reach it. Though he smiled at the offering, the weight around Louis’ eyes belied that he was still unresolved about their earlier conversation. His hesitancy returned and Harry had to nudge the plate into his shin to get him to take a bite.

“Oh, wow,” Louis laughed slightly. “This is good – really good, Styles.”

Harry smiled proudly. The next ten minutes were spent listening to Imagine Dragons, accompanied by the percussion of growing boys ravenously snacking on chips. Harry watched as Louis’ thin, agile lips became slick and soft from the grease and he made a point of wiping his mouth on his sleeve before he leaned in and pressed a fleeting, feather soft kiss on Louis’ exposed shoulder. Louis’ compulsive gesture of shoveling chip after chip into his mouth ground to a halt and he looked over at Harry with confused, amused eyes.

Harry pressed himself firmly into the side of his mattress, comforting himself with the feeling of his duvet against his cheek.

“What was that?” Louis said with a self-conscious little laugh.

“You didn’t scare me away,” Harry barely more than whispered. “I didn’t know how to deal with liking you. Especially with how much you liked Zayn. So, I hid.”

Louis blinked at him once, twice, batted at a glob of black bean on his cheek, then said, “What?”

Harry shrugged. He didn’t want to say it again.

“What do you mean you couldn’t deal with liking me?”

“Mm.” Harry smashed his face into his bedspread so firmly, only one eye remained to glimpse at Louis fearfully. “I mean I had a crush on you.” Something in him choked, like a car with sugar in the tank. “Have,” he coughed in order to release his blockage. “I have a crush on you.” He almost tacked on the words, “I guess” to the end of the sentence. However, it wasn’t a guess: He knew it to be a fact and he didn’t want to risk another miscommunication between them with a half-lie. He did, however, age a year a second in Louis’ subsequent silence. After he was four years older, Louis blurted, “Really?” at an alarmingly high pitch. “Harry, really? You being serious?”

The blood rush to Harry’s face was so intense, he felt his limbs go numb. His heartbeat was strong enough to make his head bob on his neck with no exertion of conscious will, but it was true enough. He saw the instant Louis believed him, since his eyes sparkled like paper catching and he threw his head back and laughed. He laughed like he’d been storing laughter in the cold of a sorrowful belly and now it had all broken loose, reckless and real.

“No way!” he cawed, his eyes so squinty with happiness, they were nearly tearing. “No fucking way!” he squeaked, and suddenly Harry was under assault. He cowered under a barrage of tickles and punches and noogies, even knees as Louis crawled all over him. “You sonofa bitch! You should’ve said something! You made me so fucking sad, you goober!”

When the barrage finally relented, Louis was on his back in Harry’s lap, batting at his face like a petulant cat while Harry tried to grab his wrists. “You made me think I wasn’t the awesome charmer I believe myself to be! You suck so hard, Harold!”

Harry finally prevailed, catching both of Louis’ wrists fast in his hands. “Sorry,” he said, having a harder time catching his breath from all the laughing. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

Louis had settled, content to be cradled in Harry’s legs. He studied Harry’s face and Harry suddenly felt stupid holding Louis’ wrists like he was, so he folded them across Louis’ chest like a snoozing vampire. Louis didn’t protest or even shift. He just kept staring, making Harry extremely uncomfortable until he was ready to say, “You’re my first real friend, Harry Styles. Like, real, real friend.”

Harry felt his lips go weak. “You’re my first… friend,” he replied. Louis smiled, but it was brief. “I don’t want to screw it up. I already lost you once. I really don’t want that to happen again.”

Harry became very self-conscious of what his face was doing. He didn’t want to show any of the crushing disappointment the ‘let’s just be friends’ speech warranted. He failed miserably, the corners of his mouth tugging down compulsively and his cheeks hollowing and all that lovely, lovely color leaving his face. But he knew the right words to say and he even meant them. “It’s ok,” he said, “I understand. I don’t want to mess anything up, either, so—“

He was interrupted by a finger poking his dimple-less cheek. “Hey,” Louis said gently, “don’t look so miserable. I’m not saying no. I’m just saying… not now. I still… I mean, I’m still a bit banged up over Zayn. I don’t want you to just be a rebound.”

“A…? Oh…” Harry bumbled, feeling the strength come back to him.

“I mean, c’mon,” Louis continued with a snort, “it’s not like I haven’t thought about it. I thought you were cute since sixth grade.”

It was Harry’s turn to ‘really?’ “Really?”

“Oh, hell, yeah! Why do you think I even stole your laptop from you in the first place? That’s how I flirt! Good icebreaker.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yep. You’re totally in for it, now,” Louis laughed. “You should see the shit I do when I really want to impress you. It’s gonna be hell!”

Harry found himself snickering so hard, he thought perhaps he could use a bit more hell.

~*~

It henceforth became a thing that every Tuesday and Thursday night, when Harry’s mom worked late, Louis would come over for Nachos ‘n’ Netflix. That was what they called their thing: Nachos ‘n’ Netflix, with the unspoken anticipation that Nachos ‘n’ Netflix might soon become Netflix and Chill.

On Wednesday night, when Anne came home at the regular time, Louis would come over for family dinner.

They called this Family Dinner.

Weekends were spent typically between the park, Taco Bell, and looking after Louis’ little sisters. At first, the all-girl gaggle was overwhelming for Harry, to the point where he would retreat to find the family cat and spend most of the evening secluded away with that animal, petting her amidst the sounds of squeals and rambunctiousness. Then, Doris, one of the two youngest twins, sought him out one evening and sat with him, telling tall and obviously untrue tales of Mitzy, the cat. Harry enjoyed this immensely. Her appearance harkened the inevitable convening of the rest of the family: Louis, two post-pubescent younger sisters, four pre-pubescent younger sisters, and two sets of twins, one pair eleven and, Doris’ set, three. They were a handful, but Harry’s gentle shyness enchanted them and they soon adopted him as an honorary member of their pack. Harry began looking forward to the Babysitting Weekends.

On Monday and Friday nights, Harry introverted. It took a few discussions and misunderstandings before Louis understood what this actually meant. It was difficult for him to accept that it wasn’t that Harry was annoyed with him or had lost interest, but that on occasion, he simply needed to be by himself. In fact, Louis didn’t truly accept or comprehend what it was to be an introvert until, after a full day of boying around town, he saw how genuinely tired and rundown Harry was; it affected every aspect of him, making his lanky frame small and fragile, and the apple of his cheeks pale and sunken. He still looked at Louis with warm eyes and laughed at his jokes, but it was evident he was shutting down and struggling to keep up.

“You need to recharge your batteries, huh?” Louis asked. Harry gave him a sleepy kitten smile and nodded. Louis took his hand, kissed the knuckles and said, “Let’s go plug you in.”

Their developing relationship didn’t pass without comment from their peers. Cat calls in the halls were more frequent occurrences. When it happened, Harry would go a bit clumsy with embarrassment. Somehow, Louis yelling back at the offenders, “Stop checking out my ass!” made Harry right again.

One of their teachers made the mistake of telling Louis and Harry they couldn’t sit together because couples were too disruptive. Again, Harry blushed fiercely and Louis made the world bearable again by saying, “If that’s your clever way of finding out if I’m single, Mrs. Cavanagh, yes I am, and yes, you can have my number.” Then it was dear Mrs. Cavanagh’s turn to blush and no one came to her rescue.

The worst of the lot were Louis’ jokester cronies who, after three months of wisecracks, finally accepted the fact that the two boys were strictly plutonic. This seemed to disappoint them until they realized that just because it wasn’t true didn’t mean they couldn’t make Harry’s face go red with teasing, anyway. What was worse, Louis did nothing to discourage them, but rather egged them on with witty banter and zippy comebacks. It took a while for Harry to realize this was Louis’ way of showing off – or, hell, it was Louis’ version of gallantry.  That was when Harry stopped blushing out of embarrassment and started blushing out of pleasure.

By the time spring rolled around, they still hadn’t had ‘the talk’. However, a month before school ended for the summer, Louis started holding his hand in the hall. Three weeks before school ended, when they started watching Stranger Things together, Louis started putting his arm around Harry’s shoulders and urging him to make himself comfortable atop Louis’ chest. Two weeks before school ended, Louis started dropping soft kisses on Harry’s cheek at greetings and partings. One week before school ended, they sat in the crow’s nest at the park, kicking their legs and pretending everything was normal. That was, until Louis said, “Zayn called me last week.”

The name had been unspeakable between them and hearing it spoken aloud was shocking.

“Oh, yeah?” Harry asked, his voice thin in his own ears.

Louis’ arms were crossed on the railing and his mouth was smashed atop them, muffling his words. “He apologized,” Louis explained, staring straight ahead. “Said he missed me and maybe we could hook up a little bit over the summer, see if anything was there worth him coming out over.”

In Harry’s mind’s eye, he saw the entire jungle gym crashing down around them, taking him with it. He reached frantically for his Cocoon as he always did in times of emotional distress, needing to feel its edges and, to his dismay, realized the damn thing had all but thinned to non-existence. It had been so gradual, Harry hadn’t even been aware of it happening and he felt himself starting to quake with fear upon finding himself exposed and undefended.

“What did you say?” he asked, the souvenir t-shirt he’d gotten from Malibu suddenly feeling much too thin.

“Oh,” Louis sighed casually, “I told him I didn’t think my boyfriend would approve of that.”

Harry’s brain was on self-destruct and only paused in its meltdown when he registered that Louis’ impish face was throwing a cheeky, mischievous look at him, like he was on the brink of bursting into laughter.

“What? You… What? I didn’t know you had a boyfriend!” Harry wheezed out.

That was when Louis let loose, his giggles sprinkling all over the architecturally unshakable jungle gym. “You should see your face!” he laughed. “Like you saw a ghost. _You_ , you idiot! I’m talking about you! You’re my boyfriend!”

“You jerk!” Harry shot back, whoofing in great gulps of air. He took hold of Louis’ shirt and gave him a right shaking, which only made Louis laugh harder. “That was so mean!” Harry complained. “Don’t be mean to me!”

Louis took the beating for the affection it was, laughing himself pink. “You were gonna jump! Would you have jumped off the crow’s nest for me, Harry?”

Exasperated, Harry let him go and sulked at him, “Yes!” His palpable displeasure cooled Louis’ merriment. Still smiling, Louis took a deep breath and said sincerely, “I would’ve jumped over you, too.”

“Yeah? Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

They stared at each other a second longer before they both leaned in and met in the middle for a sweet, gentle, long-overdue first kiss. Perhaps it was the sudden, recent adrenaline dump, or the weightlessness of being so high in the crow’s nest, or the fact that Harry was kissing the boy he was certain he loved that made every cell in his body dance and shimmer. Even though he had never kissed anyone before and had no idea what to do with his hands, Harry knew he was experiencing perfection.

When they parted, Louis gasped softly and nuzzled into his cheek. “Wanted to do that since sixth grade.”

Harry laughed softly. “What took you so long?”

Louis pulled back, grin lopsided. “You’re a hard one to get to, Styles.”

Harry ducked his head, knowing that was true. Apologetically, Louis nuzzled his cheek. “Didn’t want to rush it. I wanted it to be perfect. You’re special.”

Harry only trusted himself to reply with a gesture, and he reached out and took Louis’ smaller hand in his. It was a perfect fit, always had been. He was defenseless and vulnerable and he never felt more powerful in his whole life.

“So,” Harry said, his voice deep and grounded, “what are we doing this summer? Hooking up?”

Louis gave a little laugh. “Hooking up, falling in love, and defending the western front from those damn krauts.”

“I was thinking we might push into Paris.”

“Paris it is! After you, Major Styles!”

“No, I insist, Corporal Tommo: After you.”

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I would love to write more one shots! I'd love your feedback and thoughts on this one. I'm still working on Pipetrial of course, but I need to keep myself fresh and enthused. Tough when these boys aren't banding together again, isn't it?
> 
> Who's looking forward to Dunkirk? My god, I'm gonna write me some Dunkirk fics, you just see if I don't! Anyone interested in reading that?
> 
> Anyway, come up and see me some time: 
> 
> Twitter: @gvbutterworth  
> Facebook: GV Butterworth  
> Tumblr: gvbutterworth


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